The Adorned

by John Tristan

  As the days dragged on—could they have become weeks? I wasn’t sure—I thought that I could hear less and less of us in the temple. We had either died or healed, I supposed. I was among the last still in my bed. When I finally looked up with clear eyes at one of the monks-penitent and asked for water, he blinked at me, goggled, and went to fetch the priest.

  The head priest’s name was Brother Iyan; he pulled a chair over to sit next to my bed. He hovered his hands over me but did not touch me, as if he did not quite dare to offer that comfort.

  “You were badly burned,” he said with slow care. “You are healing well, but there—there shall be scars.”

  I had guessed as much. Half of me still felt near flensed. One side of my face, a shoulder, a swathe curling down my chest and back, and both my legs had been scorched. Without the monks, without their salves and tender care, I would have shriveled and curled into nothingness, a flower in flame.

  “Who brought me here?” The words still came difficult.

  “A woman, a Southerner. She did not give her name.”

  I nodded slowly. “There was a man. A man in the house where I was. His name is Roberd Tallisk. Have you heard news of him?”

  “No.” This time he answered swifter. “You asked that before—when you were—”

  When I was delirious. I sagged back into the bed. “No news.”

  “There are many missing.” He paused a moment. “Few of them will be found.”

  “Ah, Brother.” I tried to laugh. “I thought your kind was in the business of hope.”

  He touched the top of my head, lightly. It was unbandaged, my hair greasy and ill-kept. “Sleep now, Etan. You’ve still a while to heal.”

  * * *

  It was another week or more—time had become a slippery thing—before they removed the bandages for the last time. On that day, I made up my mind to leave.

  There were no mirrors in the temple, but I saw my own ravaged skin well enough. In some places my injuries were almost unnoticeable, the healing skin pale and flat. In others there were strange new scars, curled like the lines of mountains on old maps. I touched them gently; in some places I felt nothing. In others I felt nothing save pain. Wherever I had been burned, the careful greenery Adorned on me had been erased, or had left a shadow of its former outline, motionless and twisted.

  I bit my lip. The monk unwrapping the bandages stopped.

  “Am I hurting you?”

  I shook my head. I did not trust my voice.

  “Shall I finish it?”

  I nodded. He removed the last bandages from my ankles and feet and put the soothing salve on wherever aching skin showed. I closed my eyes. The pain seemed dulled now, but a new pain was sharp in me. Both the beauty of my ink and the magic of the Blood had been burned away; whatever I was, I was no longer Adorned.

  The monk rose to his feet. “It is done.”

  “Please—” I did not recognize my voice. “Please give me my clothes.”

  He handed them to me, watching from the corner of his eye. As if I were a wild thing that might snap at him. When I had dressed, he seemed more comfortable. “There will be dinner tonight. You are well enough to join us at the table now.”

  I shook my head. “No. I am leaving.”

  “Leaving?” He looked horrified. “Where will you go?”

  I swallowed back tears. “Into the city.”

  He shook his head. “You should not.”

  “Ah.” I sat down on the edge of the bed, wincing. “But I have to.”

  Before I could make ready to leave, Brother Iyan came to see me. I had pulled on an old coat and my shoes. It had been a slow and careful process, my wounded skin complaining with each slight motion. I was still testing the new limits of my body. Still, I was well enough to stand and walk, well enough to leave. All that was left was pain; that I could stand. Staying here in a narrow room, watching the half-burned city from the window? That, I could not.

  Brother Iyan lingered by the door. “Penitent Hestor tells me you are leaving.”

  I folded my scorched old clothing carefully, putting it away in a rucksack the monks-penitent had given me. There was a loaf of bread in the sack, two apples, and a thick slice of salted fish; it seemed that trade had started trickling back into the city while I had been confined to my sickbed. “I am.”

  “You are not healed.”

  “I am healed enough.”

  “The scarring will be worse if you do not stay and rest.”

  I laughed. “How much worse can it become, Brother? For a man such as I?”

  He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, looking younger than his years—but then, most priests did, their manhoods laid on the altar of their calling. “The monks have given you the salve for your wounds?”

  “Yes.” I went to move past him.

  He did not hold me, but he turned slightly so the gap between us was narrowed, and he laid a careful hand on my shoulder. “You truly insist on leaving? You could stay here in the temple.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t. You are kind to offer, but I can’t.”

  “It is better here. There is still some respect for the houses of holiness, even in a time of anarchy.”

  “I’ve never been at home in the houses of holiness, myself.” I shook my head again and slipped out from under his hand. “I am sorry, Brother, but I cannot stay. There are people I must find.”

  “Would they not have come looking for you, if they could have?” His voice was gentle and ruthless.

  I bit back a profanity. I was not in the mood for his logic. “Perhaps they did. Perhaps they could not find me.”

  “That is true enough. But Etan...it is not time to go out there on your own. After the gates were broken, after the fires...the Blooded were dead or they were gone. The Council was brought down, and the law with it. It will take time for order to come again.”

  “Who rules the city?”

  “Rules?” He shrugged. “I do not know.” He hesitated a moment. “There is a new Council, of sorts. The Sword-nobles put down the worst of the trouble, and they have made promises enough to keep true anarchy at bay. I’ve been told that Lord Loren is their head, for now.”

  “Loren.” I laughed hollowly, thinking of his candied lemons. “All the luck to him.”

  “Look,” Brother Iyan said, sighing. “I will give you what I can.” He dug in his pockets and pressed some dirty coins into my hand. They were small and cold—two ral in total, perhaps. I stared down at them. “And some advice for free: leave the city. The people are still angry. They lost too much. Their children starved while the Blooded feasted. This new Council is too busy to chase down every vigilante. Those who think themselves wronged will turn on whoever they can.”

  “What harm am I?” I spread my arms; the wounds on my back stung sharply at the motion. “Do I seem like I’ve done much ill lately?”

  Brother Iyan shook his head, looking suddenly sad. “It’s not what you have done.” He touched my collarbone lightly. The edge of a leaf showed there, untouched by the fire, at my open collar. “It is what you are. A symbol. That is enough.”

  I drew away from his touch and buttoned up my collar, pulling it as high as it could go. “There,” I said. There was an emptiness yawning in me, but I forced a smile. “Now no one will see.”

  Brother Iyan nodded. “If I were you, Etan, I would leave the city. Go south. They are faring better there, with the trade from Suramm. Head to Coppermoss, maybe, or Perayan. They are good places.”

  “And what then?” It hurt my face to smile, even thin and wry. “How shall I make my living there?”

  “That I cannot help you with.”

  I bowed my head. “You have helped enough. Good luck to you.”

  “You’ll need it more than I,” he said, and he heaved a sigh. “You are not leaving the city, are you?”

  “It is my home,” I said. “And all I love is here.”

  “It’s gone up in flames,” he said, and for the first time I
heard his voice tremble. Unshed tears shone in his eyes. “This city is scarred more than you, child. It will take it a long while to heal.”

  “But still,” I said. I touched a hand to my chest. “It is only wounded.”

  “Yes,” he said, and he turned away. “So we hope.”

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  The door of the temple shut behind me. I lifted my head and sniffed the air. The smell of the city had changed. There was still the top note of ash and the low stench of decay, not quite washed away, but it seemed deeper than that.

  My clothes felt as if they were made for another man. With each motion, they pulled and dragged at the sensitive skin where I was half healed. I felt it with every step, and I walked slow and halting.

  I had never been in the western city, but I could see the palace still standing at the center and the bend of the sun. I knew how to make my way home. Or at least, to where home had once been. I knew what the monks and the priest had told me, but still, I had to see for myself. I had to go to Nightwell Street.

  The fires might have started in the mansions of the Blooded and the fine houses on streets like ours, but they had not been selective. The flames had cut chaotic swathes through Peretim. I saw houses like rotten teeth, blackened and hollowed, and next to them their untouched neighbors, the paint on their doors barely singed.

  It had been early morning when I’d left the temple. Now it neared noon. I found the shaded doorstep of an empty, half-scorched house and sat there, marshaling my breaths. I took an apple out of my rucksack and ate it slowly. Across the road, I saw a single tree still standing healthy in a blasted grove, touched with the buds of new growth.

  Was it spring, now? Had I passed more than an entire season insensible in the temple? Surely not. This, I thought, was the last tail of a mild, deceptive winter—like the one that had brought me to the Grey City a year ago.

  I remembered, with the sudden force of a dream, the road to Peretim, the long way there from Lun—sitting on the grassy fields or under an awning when a rainstorm came, eating whatever crabbed fruits were cheapest. And before that, back to Lun itself, when the apple trees ripened and their scent hung on the autumn wind.

  Half dying in the temple, I would have had my twentieth feast day.

  I hugged my own shoulders, watching people walk by on the streets. There weren’t many of them, and they had the lean, ragged look of survivors. Their eyes passed over me. There were enough people, scarred and dirty and huddling on doorsteps, that I did not draw much comment.

  When I began to walk again, I went slower, more careful. I felt as if half a century’s age had been dropped on my body without warning. The sky was shading toward twilight when I reached Nightwell Street. I had known what I would find there. The monks and Brother Iyan had prepared me for that much. I had steeled myself against it.

  Still, I could not stop a sob when I stood before it. The ruins of it.

  The house had been reduced, rendered down to nothing. There was barely anything left, save a soot stain. What had not been burned had been taken. Even the wine cellar had been laid open, burrowed into like a maggoty corpse.

  The houses next to number nineteen had not fared much better, but at least there were pieces left of them. I covered my mouth with my hand, biting it against a cry. If Tallisk had been caught in the house, there might be bones there. Nothing else.

  But he could not have been. I refused to believe it. Somehow, I had survived the long fall into fire and darkness and been saved. He had to have been as well. Somehow, he had to.

  I turned away from the rotten cavity that had once been my house—my home. I turned away from Nightwell Street. Go to Deino Meret’s house, Tallisk had said. Meret would shelter us. Would shelter me, if he still lived. And if Tallisk lived as well, it was the first place he would have gone. That, I had to believe.

  I had been to Meret’s house only twice before, and the pathways had become newly unfamiliar to me. Where once there had been the proud manors of the Blooded there were tents and fields and scorched ground. Where last I had seen an ornamental lake there was now a scrape of empty, muddy ground.

  There were more people on the streets now, larger crowds. I was small and unseen among them. The coat that the monks had given me was a little too large, but that suited me well. I disappeared into it.

  Following the crowd I crossed into an open square, where Doiran had once taken me to a fruit seller’s market. The streets seemed to pour into it like rivers; a press of bodies like a current carried me with them toward the center. They were screaming profanities and jeers and dark jests, and raising their hands like weapons toward the center of the square.

  It seemed like there was going to be an execution. There was a wooden platform, hastily built by the looks of it, and the crowd had clustered around it. They were calling for blood, fists pumping in the air. I wondered if their chosen victim was one of the Blooded, caught in the city, caught in their wrath. I half turned away from the platform, but then I saw who they held. Whose blood they were calling for.

  It was Arderi Finn.

  His hair was still half in braids, tied with fraying white ribbons. They were vivid against his black hair. He wore fine clothes in shades of red, and his face was bruised, lip split and eyes swollen. A man with close-shorn hair and a soldier’s coat held him by the neck, shaking him in time to the cadences of his speech.

  “—corrupt and useless, just like his masters!”

  The crowd roared and spat; they were like a single beast. I felt the press of bodies against me, shifting and heaving. I wanted to leave. I searched for an exit. But I looked up first, and I saw Arderi’s tired eyes.

  He had caught my gaze—he had known me. One word from him and the crowd would be on me. Another victim might save him, might deflect their ire, but he said nothing. He only held my gaze, as if asking me to watch.

  “Shall we see this tiger’s stripes?”

  The crowd howled when his Adornments were revealed. His clothes went on a heap. Greedy hands grabbed and tore at them, the fabric ripping. The ribbons were torn from his hair. A dagger flashed in the soldier’s hand. He forced Arderi to his knees. Locks of his hair were caught by the wind, black as ink in water.

  “Shall we show this Blood-pet how we’ve suffered, while he was swathed in silk?”

  Another howl ripped through the crowd like an earthquake. I bit my tongue to keep from crying out. There was no pity here.

  Arderi kept very still as the soldier began to cut him. Shallow cuts, they were, and long, crisscrossed over chest and back. He had closed his eyes. Blood poured down and dripped onto the wooden platform. The soldier took a handful of ash and dirt and rubbed it in Arderi’s wounds. A cheer rose from the crowd. He had meant not to kill, but to scar—to ruin.

  I touched my ragged cheek. That work had already been done on me.

  Tears stung my eyes; I willed them away before they could be seen. They had finished with Arderi now, and had thrown him off the wooden dais. I caught a glimpse of him, of his clumsy-shaven head, and then he was gone, vanished in the crowd.

  I never saw him again.

  They dragged on a merchant from Yr next, one of the isle-folk, pale and terror-struck. I never heard what accusations were laid against him; I could not stay another moment. I turned away and pressed my way through, eyes fixed on the ground. Bare feet and boots and foot wraps mixed in the stamping crush. I elbowed my way out of the square, and I could breathe again.

  Six men—all Southerners, in immaculate uniform—marched down the street. I pressed myself up against a wall to let them pass. They carried long rifles and short, curved swords. The swords stayed in their scabbards, but they fired their rifles above the crowd. “Move along!” the commander shouted. “Move along, now! Clear the square! Or I swear, you’ll be in Ashen or with Madame Death before the day’s out.”

  These were Loren’s soldiers, I was sure of it—one or two might have once ridden in his carriage with me, on the journey back from Fevre
wood. So the city was not given over entirely to men with loud voices and sharp notions of justice; it was good to know, but I did not stay to watch them at their business. I turned into a narrow street, away from the noise. I fit in better in the shadows.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  It was nightfall when I reached Deino Meret’s house. It was whole, untouched by fire, but it lay in darkness. Not a line of lamplight showed behind the windows or under the door. I sidled up to it with slow care, as if it were a slumbering beast. My hope was draining away with each step closer. There was no one here. The house stood empty.

  When I came closer, I saw the door had been hammered shut. Wooden planks were crisscrossed over it, and over most of the windows as well. On one window, the planks had been pulled away clumsily, leaving enough of a gap for me to squeeze through. I clambered inside, wincing as the wood dug splinters into tender skin.

  It was warm inside, or warmer than the street at least. I walked carefully through the darkness of the house, my eyes slowly adjusting. What furniture still remained was in disarray. There had been looters here, taking what they could. A bottle lay broken on the floor of the kitchen. There was a stain on one of the walls.

  Still, there was a familiar smell, a familiar warmth to the place, even gutted like this. I could have gone back to the temple, I supposed, or slept under an unoccupied eave, but here in the dark of Meret’s house I felt sheltered. I made my way down to the apprentices’ quarters. The beds were still there, though the sheets had been ripped off of them. I settled down onto the mattress, not taking off my heavy coat.

  Sleep came like a wave, dark and immediate. The monks had given me their blessed salve, but none of the valerian tincture, and without it, I dreamed for the first time in weeks. They were slow nightmares of falling, of pale twisted faces.

  I woke up before dawn, with dusty blue twilight creeping in through slits in the boarded-up windows. Diagonal lines of shadow and light played across the wall. I drew the coat closer around me and crossed my arms gently over my chest, holding myself. I thought of the single apple and handful of bread left in my pack. Some of the temples had daily meals to feed the hungry; the monks-penitent had told me of them.